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ProfessorCirno posted:This thread really is a helpful reminder as to how 4e fans were different from the 5e trash. 4e fans are more then ready to talk about 4e's flaws. There's far too much chaff in feats and powers. Numbers and skill gaps get too high at higher levels. Some classes lack needed support, others have too much. The focus on status effects in later levels leads to unintuitive defensive needs. High paragon and epic gets bogged down by choice paralysis. Certain group combos destroy the game balance. Attribute scores, despite being one of the first things you choose on your character, have extreme long term effects that can screw over players. The overall design leads to heavy usage of "builds." These are all flaws that 4e fans talk about at length. During the era of 4e I was always struck by how the people who insisted they had lost the first round of the grand Edition War consistently demonstrated that if they had to be losers they would at least be sore losers. It comes as no surprise that, now that they've "won" they are going to be sore winners, too. I loved 4e, love modern game design (and wrote some anti-grog articles on Kobold Quarterly's Web site that inspired some choice material in grognards.txt), but have never heard a reason why I should buy 5e now that 4e is 86ed; 5e enthusiasts keep insisting that other people liking this game ("uniting the editions") is a good thing and will make the game more fun, but I don't see how other people having fun in tabletop sessions that I'm not at and never will be at will make my tabletop sessions more fun. Also, everything Kai Tave pointed out about "verisimilitude" is fundamentally accurate. I would go further to say that the usage of "verisimilitude" in art history (neoclassicism in post-Renaissance Europe lasts until the 18th-ish century) is strongly informed by its contextual usage in criticism: "truth-seeming"-ness. Something realistic (like, the stuff you'd see in real life such as a stupid king or a smart peasant) was inappropriate in societies that valued verisimilitude in their art because art was supposed to be better than real life, depicting the way things ought to be instead of the way things are. Nothing in the neoclassical ideal (from which verisimilitude is derived) necessitates fighters not having nice things. If anything, I'd say verisimilitude militates in favor of them NOT being limited by mundanity or realism, but whatever. Grogs be grogs.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:57
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Dairy Power posted:You didn't "debunk" any of my math. You made different assumptions than I did and then said I was wrong. Your assumptions were things like 'every enemy has some multiple of 26 or 27 hp, so the greataxe is the best weapon'. Which is a pretty bad assumption, which is why he said 'debunked'.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:57
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Jack the Lad posted:It is, yeah; phone posting and can't get it to work. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3647634&userid=146216&perpage=40&pagenumber=7#post434962833 Here ya go.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:59
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Dairy Power posted:drat man. Those are some sick burns. I'm impressed that you actually managed to avoid typing "grog" for a whole post-- kudos for that.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:59
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Jack the Lad posted:Nobody is saying that other classes are better at using weapons than Fighters. What everyone is (rightly) saying is that the only way in which they're better (making more attacks) doesn't not make playing a Fighter interesting. It's just "I hit it with my axe" vs "I hit it with my axe... twice". I believe this is the relevant post you wanted?
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Sep 24, 2014 01:01
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ProfessorCirno posted:These are all flaws that 4e fans talk about at length. You forgot gently caress picking out magic items.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:01
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NachtSieger posted:You forgot gently caress picking out magic items. loving seriously. I am picking out magic items as we speak and this is the part about character creation I hate the most.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:02
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NachtSieger posted:You forgot gently caress picking out magic items.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:04
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FMguru posted:Also: feat taxes, bad MM 1 math, the trainwreck that was skill challenges Don't forget awful premade adventures. I'm sure half the reason we switched over to 5e was because our group was knee-deep in the Pyramid of Shadows.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:07
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I wasn't trying to make a perfect list of everything you know  Though this does help my point!
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Sep 24, 2014 01:08
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Can I add how completely loving boring and/or bad a lot of the essentials classes were?
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Sep 24, 2014 01:09
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ProfessorCirno posted:I wasn't trying to make a perfect list of everything you know  Magic items are very very important.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:10
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ProfessorCirno posted:This thread really is a helpful reminder as to how 4e fans were different from the 5e trash. 4e fans are more then ready to talk about 4e's flaws. There's far too much chaff in feats and powers. Numbers and skill gaps get too high at higher levels. Some classes lack needed support, others have too much. The focus on status effects in later levels leads to unintuitive defensive needs. High paragon and epic gets bogged down by choice paralysis. Certain group combos destroy the game balance. Attribute scores, despite being one of the first things you choose on your character, have extreme long term effects that can screw over players. The overall design leads to heavy usage of "builds." These are all flaws that 4e fans talk about at length. e: ugh feat taxes. i forgot about those. Jackard fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 01:10
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Arivia posted:They are, but 4e dies on the vine when you do lots of "regular" combats instead of larger set pieces. So sure you could do a hexcrawl in 4e and it would be incredibly boring. The easy solution to this is to just run the "regular" combats using something like 1/2 the regular XP budget and spending a lot of it on minions. This helps give you the 3.5 feeling "enemies go down to one attack like chumps" combats. 2 hit minions are also a good idea for fights like this. Unfortunately neither of these ideas show up in any official 4th edition material.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:12
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S.J. posted:Can I add how completely loving boring and/or bad a lot of the essentials classes were? Essentials was the preview of 5e so that shouldn't be surprising. Also if you want to know everything about how 5e was made, note that Essentials literally added a second "Portable Hole" meant to mimic the AD&D one, and then named it "TRUE Portable Hole." But hey, maybe 5e is just here to bring us all together guys.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:13
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Kaizer88 posted:I have to agree with that. When you're past 9th level, your pc's power levels start becoming more like some episode of DBZ. Players of that level could slaughter whole legions of town guards. I think 5th edition is at least better with regards to the power difference between really high level things and 1st level schlubs ; Ac doesn't go much higher than 20, and proficiency bonuses don't go higher than 6. You'd still get the ridiculous HP bloat though. Also monsters still scale in check difficulty while PC defenses don't necessarily scale that high making them nigh useless. HP is supposed to go up, however, if Damage does. On the other hand, non-damaging methods to stop enemies or end encounters also increase in number making HP irrelevant in that case.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:17
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S.J. posted:Can I add how completely loving boring and/or bad a lot of the essentials classes were?
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Sep 24, 2014 01:18
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The "combat takes too long in 4E" complaint is one I can sort of empathize with, yet all having a D&D where an individual combat doesn't as long usually results in is "now that combat moves faster we can have more fights per session!" which, okay, doesn't really seem like it's doing much to cut down on the total time spent on fighting. And really, if you aren't throwing down with some dudes while playing D&D it's not like the system, in any iteration, really brings a lot to do to the table.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:20
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No poo poo 4e combat takes too long; when you get rid of "I cast this spell and the fight ends" you have to actually -gasp- FIGHT the fights! 
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Sep 24, 2014 01:29
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One of the best things about BOUNDED MATH or whatever the hell they're calling it in 5e is that literally even Gimli or Legolas are too powerful for a 5e fighter to aspire for. 70 something orcs in one combat? Not while Mearls is on the case!
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Sep 24, 2014 01:31
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I absolutely believe that Next fights run faster than 4E fights, but by all accounts that's largely by dint of having less interesting stuff to do during them.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:41
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Your less interesting stuff is my less tedious bullshit to keep track of. I mean, a typical fight I just had, the Ranger jumped out of a tree wanting to transfer the momentum of his fall into a stab at an ogre, which I let him do with an athletics check, the rogue stealthed from spot to spot sniping and looting as he could, the trickster cleric used a body double to distract enemies and dish out damage, the warlock shot a bunch of witch bolts around then pulled a pact weapon out, and the monk ran from orc to orc knocking them out. It was plenty interesting. I guess everyone wasn't using encounter and daily powers to do 5d4 sonic damage to a 15 foot square and mark two enemies at a -2 penalty or whatever so it must have actually been boring.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:50
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"When I describe the stuff that happened in this game without all the die rolling and numbers behind it, it sounds way cooler than this other game which I only describe in terms of die rolling and numbers."
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Sep 24, 2014 01:56
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greatn posted:Your less interesting stuff is my less tedious bullshit to keep track of. Okay. I play in a 4e game that developed from a 3.5 game, and the DM is not particularly creative. 4e codifies these interesting things into discrete powers, which necessarily limits them from the full potential of freeform combat improvisation, but allows 4e baseline to be more interesting than 3.5 baseline because you're not dependent on the abilities of the DM to Errol Flynn your way through combat. Not to mention that codifying these things limits people's ability to argue over plausibility and exempts the DM from having to work out balanced mechanical interactions for a crane kick on the fly. 4e even provides a way to bring these in through the much-maligned page 42.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:58
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greatn posted:Your less interesting stuff is my less tedious bullshit to keep track of. Tell me, what did the orcs do?
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Sep 24, 2014 02:04
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Well, one of the two games has a LOT more dice rolling and numbers. I don't think there's any denying that. All the stuff I described from the encounter back a couple of posts ago was relatively mundane, but flavored by the characters and the situation making it interesting, and 4e is the exact same way, but you people act like it is superbly more interesting. 4e has going for its combat that it is somewhat more dramatic when the player characters seem like they are losing until they bust out their encounter or daily they didn't want to use and turn the tables. But you get that tables turning moment every fight, and the trigger is the same, and it gets really repetitive. 5e on the other hand, from the 10 or so combats I've run, is relatively unpredicatble and there's a lot less die rolling and book browsing.
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Sep 24, 2014 02:04
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greatn posted:Your less interesting stuff is my less tedious bullshit to keep track of. "I'm going to describe the game I like in enough detail to make it sound awesome and great fun. Meanwhile I will describe the game I don't like in the driest possible terms to make it and those who support it look unappealing and anti-fun."
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Sep 24, 2014 02:05
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greatn posted:I guess everyone wasn't using encounter and daily powers to do 5d4 sonic damage to a 15 foot square and mark two enemies at a -2 penalty or whatever so it must have actually been boring.  into your roleplay maybe?
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Sep 24, 2014 02:06
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NachtSieger posted:"I'm going to describe the game I like in enough detail to make it sound awesome and great fun. Meanwhile I will describe the game I don't like in the driest possible terms to make it and those who support it look unappealing and anti-fun." "I'm am also not going to talk about the dice rolls or the numbers that were used in this awesome role-played combat I had because those aren't important, unlike in that other game where it's all numbers all the time"
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Sep 24, 2014 02:07
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greatn posted:Well, one of the two games has a LOT more dice rolling and numbers. I don't think there's any denying that. So in other words, the combat system annoys you in both games, but you're unable to circumvent it as easily in 4e compared to 5e. Have you considered that you may not like Dungeons and Dragons? Not to mention that removing dice-rolling from the equation either removes the gameplay entirely from the situation or just produces what Strunk and White would call "needless words".
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Sep 24, 2014 02:10
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Can you please not copy/paste the Old School Primer here tia
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Sep 24, 2014 02:11
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FMguru posted:Also: feat taxes, bad MM 1 math, the trainwreck that was skill challenges Skill challenges were a wonderful idea that fails the moment you try to hang actual rules on it. Good from the viewpoint of "making the DMG not just a codex of rules but also a toolbox of advice for DMs on everything from problem players to making published adventures work when they didn't think of something". But then "how you could frame a skill challenge" became "the only way to do a skill challenge" and every attempt to clarify things just made it worse.
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Sep 24, 2014 02:12
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Bruceski posted:Skill challenges were a wonderful idea that fails the moment you try to hang actual rules on it. Good from the viewpoint of "making the DMG not just a codex of rules but also a toolbox of advice for DMs on everything from problem players to making published adventures work when they didn't think of something". But then "how you could frame a skill challenge" became "the only way to do a skill challenge" and every attempt to clarify things just made it worse. Skill challenges are a bad idea at a conceptual level because of the way skills work in D&D since 2e.
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Sep 24, 2014 02:13
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greatn posted:Well, one of the two games has a LOT more dice rolling and numbers. I don't think there's any denying that. "The cleric was having fun spamming Sacred Flame (because the monster was immune to weapons) and was totally bummed out when they had to use their action to, instead,heal someone." Stripping out encounter and daily powers hasn't made 5e any more dynamic. Unsurprisingly there's just a lot of spamming
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Sep 24, 2014 02:14
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Bruceski posted:Skill challenges were a wonderful idea that fails the moment you try to hang actual rules on it. Good from the viewpoint of "making the DMG not just a codex of rules but also a toolbox of advice for DMs on everything from problem players to making published adventures work when they didn't think of something". But then "how you could frame a skill challenge" became "the only way to do a skill challenge" and every attempt to clarify things just made it worse.
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Sep 24, 2014 02:14
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FMguru posted:There's the kernel of a good idea there - since the combat system was finely tuned and balanced so all the characters would have something useful to do in combat situations, the skill rules should have similar mechanic so that all the characters can contribute to non-combat situations. But the actual implementation... Ability scores and class skill lists did a lot to kill it. Having rangers/paladins/whatever use Wisdom for their riders implied that probably you might have +X Wisdom modifier to the detriment of any skills with other key abilities. They should have just given you the combat math and had separate skill math. 5e does about as good a job as 4e at getting around class skill lists using backgrounds..
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Sep 24, 2014 02:21
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Last time I played a 4e fighter, at the peak of the dragon's lair, I began moving like wildfire across the fight, shifting between baddies as they advanced and slamming them back with my shield, appearing almost anywhere and everywhere they tried to advance, turning the battlefield into my playground. When the dragon swooped down to end our attempt at raiding it's hoard, the ranger fired twice, clipping it's wings, forcing it to land. At our warlord's command I and the barbarian charged, avoiding it's fiery breath to bring it's death in steel and muscle. Last time I played 3e I full attack'd at +7/+2 for 1d12+something. Then the wizard cast a spell that drained it's dexterity to 0 and we won. Instead of saying 4e was bad, maybe you loving suck at roleplaying and have no imagination?????
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Sep 24, 2014 02:23
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4e doesn't have classes. There's one class.
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Sep 24, 2014 02:24
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greatn posted:4e doesn't have classes. There's one class. 4e is communism, which is probably why I liked it so much.
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Sep 24, 2014 02:26
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greatn posted:4e doesn't have classes. There's one class. With 4e Communism a true classless system exists where everyone can have fun and reap the benefits of their time and energy spent in the game. With 5e/3e Capitalism only the Spellcasting Classes can enjoy the game, but in turn can only run it so long as the "lesser" martial classes give up their labor for relatively nothing. The Spellcasting Class exists only as a leech, draining the fun of all other classes to keep itself fat and fed. The true answer is for martial classes to rise up and dispose of the spellcasters to bring about true equality. An insightful remark.
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Sep 24, 2014 02:27
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